T3h Sorrow
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The History of World of Warcraft
There is no bigger PC game than World of Warcraft. This is, after all, the game responsible for uncountable lost jobs, broken marriages, and failed classes. It's also spawned one South Park episode, a mini civil rights crisis, an in-production movie, an epidemic, and at least one reported fatality. Now it's about to get its first expansion pack, opening up two new races and a whole new continent for players to explore.
When it released World of Warcraft a little over two years ago, developer Blizzard was treading the exact same ground as Everquest, Ultima Online, and even Meridian 59 before it. Blizzard just figured how to sell it to tens of millions rather than hundreds of thousands. In doing so, it took what was the most nerdy of nerdy game genres and transformed it into the biggest mainstream gaming phenomenon since Tetris. Put in context, it absolutely dwarfs every other MMO ever released - even those crazy popular Korean ones that you've never played.
Not only that, it significantly outranks them all put together. Just think, we were impressed when it sold 250,000 on its launch day in November 2004, causing its servers to collapse under the sheer weight of demand -- which, of course, is nothing new for Blizzard. Diablo II players will already be familiar with this part of the story. It's as if Blizzard has never really been able to come to terms with its own popularity, and can never quite meet demand in the early days of each release. Or it's making a savvy, if cold, business decision: why spend a fortune buying servers that can meet launch day demand when you know it'll drop off in a week or two?
Regardless of the reasons, Blizzard's perceived sluggish response made the game a target for brickbats from many observers. Popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade even withdrew its Game of the Year gong from Warcraft in mid-January 2005. As Jerry "Tycho" Holkins commented at the time, "It was given too early, and [Blizzard has] squandered it. It is now withheld. It will be released only when they prove themselves worthy stewards of it."
That took some time. Blizzard's issues continued intermittently throughout 2005, causing the company to issue two-day account extensions to US subscribers in March (and in European ones in September). Log-in queues became a regular sight on most servers (and still are, on the busy ones). For a little while, it began to look as if Blizzard had bitten off a little more than it could chew.
But every MMORPG has server stability problems at some point and September 2005 saw World of Warcraft making headlines for entirely more interesting reasons. It all started with the introduction of the Zul'Gurub raid instance in the v1.7 content patch, and more specifically with its boss, Hakar. Hakar, as you'll know if you've fought him, has a debuff ability called Corrupted Blood that causes a few hundred points of damage every few seconds and spreads to other players (or non-player characters) in the nearby area.
Some bright spark on Archimonde, however, figured out that if you deliberately infect a pet with Corrupted Blood and subsequently unsummon it, then it'll still be infected when you bring the pet out again. What would you do in that situation? Head for the nearest major population center, pull out your pet, and watch the chaos? Yeah, and that's exactly what happened.
Cities full of corpses was the result. Players began deliberately spreading the plague from place to place. Bans were threatened, many zones became no-go areas, and quarantines were imposed. Blizzard eventually fixed the problem, although it took several tries, and the event made headlines worldwide. Perhaps most interestingly of all, it also prompted the CDC to get in touch with Blizzard and request information on the spread of the plague, in the hope that it might yield data applicable to real-world epidemic management!
Speaking of Warcraft and the real world, that brings us to the game's most famous player: your friend and mine, Leeroy Jenkins. Sure, the video that shot him to stardom was staged. But it was still funny. If you missed it -- where were you? -- it was a clip made by the Pals For Life guild on the Laughing Skull server, and depicted a failed raid on the Rookery in Upper Blackrock Spire. To cut a moderately short story even shorter, paladin Leeroy ignores the raid's carefully laid plans, runs into a room full of baddies with a cry of "Let's do this!", and aggros an impressive number of dragonlings resulting in the complete annihilation of his guild-mates. His bizarre response? "At least I got chicken." Pals For Life reportedly claim it was based on a real event, but it's just as funny either way.
Leeroy's fame continues with a number of cameo appearances in other games. He's become a verb, too: "to Leeroy" means to cause a wipe through foolhardy behavior, as in "You Leeroyed that up pretty good, noob". He even popped up on College Jeopardy, and you can't get much more mainstream than that. What's next for Leeroy? I'll take "immortality" for 500, please, Alex.
January 2006 brought World of Warcraft's first planned world event: the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, and its accompanying War Effort. Closed at first, the Gates lead to two new instances - but Horde and Alliance players had to cooperate to gather materials to open them. The Medivh server was first to meet their goals, but the opening ceremony proved a little too popular for its own good, as players from other servers created Medivh characters to watch the show - or to fill the server and prevent legit Medivh players from completing their tasks. Predictably, the server crashed, hard.
Blizzard also took some fire in the press when a player named Sara Andrews was threatened with being banned from the game for recruiting for a homosexual-friendly guild. The inevitable outcry didn't take long to appear, and Blizzard eventually backed down, saying the policy was only intended to protect players from harassment. Andrews received an apology, and openly gay-friendly guilds are now fair game.
Although it may have got off to a rocky start, 2006 brought renewed success for Warcraft. In its second year, it grew its worldwide subscriber base by two million, made ever-increasing appearances on television and in the media, and was even the subject of a South Park episode that was watched by over three million people. The year finished up with the announcement that the game's total international subscriber count was somewhere over a staggering eight million, and as 2007 opens and its first expansion hits the streets, Warcraft couldn't be in a stronger position. Roll on ten million.
, this however, made me laugh, comments? questions? etc?http://videogames.yahoo.com/gamepreview?cid=1993096109&tab=previews&page=2&eid=500851